Forum:Looking For Pandora Information
I've been hired by Pocketbooks and Gearbox to write a Borderlands novel, and I am looking for ways to get a clearer picture of Pandora. I've played the game extensively of course.I've seen the map that shows the various gameplay areas, but I need to see the rest of the planet. I'll be in touch with Gearbox but if there are any other handy resources I'd be glad if someone let me know... John Shirley http://www.darkecho.com/johnshirley You can respond here or contact me at jshirley@darkecho.com The only thing I could advise you on is to not make it too realistic, if you try to increase the realism of borderlands you'll just murder what makes it great... realism is not required for a good book, look at hitchhikers guide, thats something you'll have to keep in mind. However on further review of your credentials... I hardly think that will be an issue.-TOXICMOOSEDOG13 It's very cool to know that you are going to Write it, they made a good choice having you do it. http://www.21cmagazine.com/#323965/John-Shirley-The-Cyberpunk Besides the four adventures you are going to have to write about Scooters Mom Moxxi and who was Scooters dad? was it Marcus? Who is the little kid he is telling the intro stories to? and what about the Guardian Angel? Who are the Meridians? How come we can't get to the city of Sanctuary that Helena Pierce talks about, she says the road is blocked, Then you have all the manufacture companies and their stories.CosmicStrike 20:31, October 21, 2010 (UTC) No such thing as "Meridians". The aliens are called Eridians. Maybe you shouldn't be giving this guy advice if you're too stupid to read the in-game text, pal. Yeah, bro. Sactuary is totally the Eridian Promontory. That's why Helena needed you to get rid of Flynt. At this point, the only areas that exist are the ones detailed in the GOTY map, and a handful of others that are only mentioned in passing by a couple of NPCs, like Sanctuary. GT: Conceited Jarrad XBOX360 22:47, October 19, 2010 (UTC) This sounds like a pretty neat idea, but as CJ said we really don't know much about anything not experienced in the game. Sanctuary is actually the only place I remember being mentioned that we haven't been, and even then all we know is that it's a capital of sorts and it was on lockdown at some point after Baron Flynt died. I would say that you can take liberties with designing pretty much any area as long as it still fits with what we know of Pandora. However, I think it might be neat to see if you can flesh out Sanctuary as a setting, but it really all depends on where you want to go with this novel. Laser Robotics (talk) 23:34, October 19, 2010 (UTC) Yeah, now that I think of it the only place on Pandora that's discussed but not visited is Sanctuary. All the others are other planets like Promethea and Aquator.GT: Conceited Jarrad XBOX360 23:58, October 19, 2010 (UTC) TrollofReason has some interesting conjecture on Pandora. 00:17, October 20, 2010 (UTC) : I do, indeed, have quite a bit of conjecture regarding the possible enviroments and variation of those environments to be found on Pandora. If you can put up with my stream-of-thought ramblings, the "Talk" section of the actual Pandora page could prove stimulating. Especially the bit regarding possible quirks on how water might act on a planet with a very high atmospheric pressure. : I mean, there's probably a reason that so much parched, somewhat cracked land still exists along the Trash Coast despite it being next to a sea. High pressure means no easy evaporation, no evaporation means no rain, no rain means no water easily making it to the land. : And other such ejaculations. TrollofReason 19:36, October 22, 2010 (UTC) What you should keep in mind, no one at Gearbox ever said how large Pandora actually is and judging from the DLC, there's PLENTY of environmental material to work with. Also keep in mind that the Skags and everything only "woke up from hibernation" after a winter. The rules for how absurd or realistic something can be is defined in the mood of the game. The rest is up to the imagination. Make sure to also read the manual backwards and forwards to stock-up on ideas for Manufacturer or back-story related references. YSoSrs Cat 00:37, October 20, 2010 (UTC) I agree with all of these other guys, sanctuary is the only place you can't visit but is discussed (come to think of it, that would be a tight dlc). Anyways, you might want to consider the novel taking place 200 years after borderlands, and have people venture into the vault. Just an idea. That way, you could pretty much make up all of the environment. Just make sure you have Marcus narrating the book. The "story within a story" type. Anything's possible right? And Scooter. Lots of Scooter. Ultra 88 October 20, 2010 (UTC) THANKS everyone for your suggestions. I'll look into this stuff. The story is already *generally* set after conferring with the game designers and there are several pov characters, some new ones from offplanet, and ROLAND. They wanted Roland as the most popular character. So it's not all that much later. I'm creating a fair amount of my own material for the book --and of course it won't feel like playing it in every respect, gif someone shoots a creature dead in my novel the creature won't disgorge useful items or money it's swallowed --no zombie islands -- it'll feel like a reasonably believable science fiction adventure novel. But you'll definitely recognize Pandora and most of the creatures you meet in the game will be there, including those crazy little dwarfish bastards. I intend to invent some new creatures too, if I can get permission for that...I have a lot of latitude but am not contradicting the game. I also did the BIOSHOCK novel, which is coming out in March...from a different publisher...John Shirley http://www.darkecho.com/johnshirley Just remember that from the shot we see of the Guardian Angel, at least half of pandora is complete desert. Just' sayin'. 20:04, October 20, 2010 (UTC) More Roland? Awesome!! I'd like to see some of the interaction from the pov of the 'traitor' when he's dealing with the Lance...really the only character development that has been hinted at that wasn't explored enough in my opinion. Thank you in advance, Mr. Shirley, for your work. Good luck, and good writing!! Mister Joshua 20:31, October 20, 2010 (UTC) I'd be interested in seeing the ending fleshed out a bit. I had some questions about the Vault monster. Is it gone for good? Did we kill it or does it just try attacking Pandora every 200 years? Why does Angel trick you into opening the door to that dimension? What is her real agenda? Are the Eridans really the keepers of the vault or are they they the first wave? Anyway, some food for thought. To the above anon: Unsure about the Destroyer, but it seems likely that it's dead. The angel was an AI program used by Hyperion to get you to beat Atlas to the Vault and kill the Destroyer so they could capitalize on the expected contents of the Vault. This is evidenced by the intro of DLC 4. The Eridians have likely been long gone, and The Guardians are merely bots or constructs of some sort, left by the Eridians to guard the Vault. This is evidenced by the fact that the Guardians do not use Eridian weaponry, yet it must have been created for some purpose to be used by someone. GT: ConceitedJarrad XBOX360 07:44, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Woohoo! Gearbox has done the right thing and got a top science fiction author to do the book. I mean this is John Shirley, not some no-name hack. From seminal cyberpunk to bizarre horror, Mr Shirley has done it all (and he wrote the lyrics for a bunch of Blue Oyster Cult songs). I'm looking forward to your book, especially if it can flesh out Roland's past and motivation, and give us more of a sense of the geography and locales of Pandora. I was really disappointed that we never got to see Sanctuary, since it was mentioned so frequently in-game. And there's plenty of room for "world-building" since Pandora seems to be a rather unusual planet in a rather unusual solar system (see Pandora for more info, especially the notes and speculation about Pandora being extremely mineral rich, probably very small (by planetary standards), and the influence the high levels of iridium might have on the planet's lifeforms)). Go for it, Mr Shirley - you can give us a fully-realised, solidly-believable science fiction novel, instead of the usual dire dreck that we've come to expect from game tie-ins. But after that rap - Mr Shirley: "you treat her right, or I'll bury you where I buried Lucky!" ;) Outback Yak 08:08, October 21, 2010 (UTC) Why Roland? Don't all of the characters have some kind of background? I think it'd be pretty cool to reveal the Lilith, Mordecai, and Brick story too 06:12, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Well im really looking forward to this but telling the characters background would be awesome like was lilith always hot. I may be wrong on this but I always thought sanctuary was Old Haven. I always took this as Old Haven was a safe place before the Lance took it over, hence the lock down. 16:27, October 22, 2010 (UTC) From the story of the main game i think the bandits took over Old Haven first. Then the Lance killed all the bandits in Old Haven and set up the signal fires to lure more bandits to come to old haven so the Lance could kill them as well, eliminating the competition for the vault and not having to pay them for attacking the vault hunters for Atlas . I believe Sanctuary is a seperate place that is somewhere past the Salt Flats, but is in an as yet undisclosed place. Veggienater 17:28, October 22, 2010 (UTC) Be sure to look at the expansion packs also, and above all, listen to the Echo recordings!!! IMO, you won't really grasp Borderlands until you listen to the Echo recordings!!!